[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 2, “Through the Valley.” For earlier coverage, check out last week’s review.]
“There are just some things, everyone agrees, that are just fucking wrong.”
Long before and well after Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) spits these words at Joel (Pedro Pascal), it’s clear they aren’t true. If the proverbial “everyone” were polled about what was about to happen — not only that Joel should be killed, but that he should be shot, tortured, and beaten to death in front of Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a young woman who became his daughter — most would agree it was wrong.
Most, but not all. Abby obviously doesn’t think it’s wrong. Five years ago, she promised to kill Joel, slowly, and she follows through, without hesitation and with frightening conviction. Manny (Danny Ramirez) seems to savor it, as well. The rest of the W.L.F. squad isn’t exactly enthusiastic — their wary, pale faces betray their tacit, silent approval — but they still allow it to happen. They know it’s wrong, like the rest of us watching, and they, too, are powerless to stop it.
But what kills me about this moment — a moment so breathtakingly sad I could barely stomach revisiting it for this review — is that when Abby promises to kill Joel, when she stares into his defeated eyes with insatiable hatred, when she says, “There are just some things, everyone agrees, that are just fucking wrong”… Joel nods. He agrees with her. He meets her gaze, hears her words, and accepts his fate. He dies believing he deserves to die, and that’s a truly wretched way to go.
“The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 2, tells a tale of two astonishing attacks. One takes place in Jackson, where thousands of clickers (and one borderline invincible bloater) surface from their snowy hideaway to lay siege to our characters’ edenic community. Led by power couple Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Maria (Rutina Wesley), the survivors band together, stick to their defense plan, and fend off the upstart invasion.
As a spectacle, there are few better ways to describe it than awesome. Seeing the clickers crawl out from under the above-ground graveyards they were using as cover? Awesome. Watching the ramps drop down over the walls, the barrels roll out onto the battlefield, and the fiery carnage brought on by their explosions? Awesome. The fish-in-a-barrel firing range set up above Main Street? Awesome. The last line of defense being four guys with flamethrowers? Awesome. Unleashing the dogs, just in the nick of time, as reinforcements that turn the tide? Very, very awesome. (Best Doggo Award goes to the pupper that latched onto a clicker’s face in mid-air.)
But bolstering the shocking action scenes was the heavy tension of human drama. Jackson’s life-or-death last stand started with Tommy and Maria sharing a good luck kiss and ended with their relieved embrace. In between, they both stared death in the face — Tommy, when his flamethrower’s tank ran dry and the bloater stood looming above him (before finally withering to its wounds), and Maria when the roofs were overrun and every which way she turned, the undead were adding to their ranks.
Director Mark Mylod (an Emmy winner for “Succession” who’s also directed six episodes of “Game of Thrones”) kept the action rooted in characters; the onslaught was predominantly seen from Tommy and Maria’s perspective, with additional vantage points mainly deployed to emphasize the escalating threats all around them. Tommy doesn’t see the trucks roll back when the droves of clickers first run into the city walls, but he feels it — the shaky ground on which the town stands — and the added visual reference helps us share his experience. Similarly, Maria isn’t there when the bloater cracks through the fence of tree trunks like he’s Jack Torrance smashing through a bathroom door, but the tight framing of the titan’s entrance makes it all the more intimidating.
Focusing on people is always the first priority in “The Last of Us,” which is why the second astonishing attack is even more dreadful, tense, and upsetting. Joel’s death almost didn’t happen. Not only could he have spent the day helping out Tommy and Maria, if only he’d heard their emergency radio message to return home — a comparatively safe space for Joel to occupy — but Abby nearly went back home without ever finding Joel. Seeing the fortress protecting Jackson, her cohorts were ready to abandon ship the second she came back to the ski lodge. Facing the zero-degree temperature and even colder wind chill, Abby was about to turn back when she spotted the two riders on patrol. Then she fell down the mountain, awakened the beasts within, and the rest is history.
Would she have gone back, as Owen (Spencer Lord) wanted? I doubt it. Even by herself, I think she would’ve found a way to get to Joel, but if the what-ifs add to the heartache, they don’t really matter as much as her will, Joel’s will, and what’s become of Ellie’s. It took Abby five years to find Joel. Who knows what and who she lost in that time, but her determination only grew stronger. Her conviction only grew stronger. But her understanding of what happened to her father — her understanding of Joel, be it what he did or why he did it — remained exactly the same.
It called to mind a line from earlier in the episode, when Ellie scoffed at Jesse (Young Mazino) when he said there might be thousands of clickers hiding under the snow. “Ah, certainty masquerading as knowledge — very Ellie of you.” His theory turned out to be true, and considering it could be true is what saved the town. Had they acted like Ellie, feigning to know something they don’t, everyone would likely be dead.
Abby and Ellie’s similarities aren’t something either would want to consider right now, but the episode starts to pick at them. In her nightmare that opened Episode 2, Abby sees herself walking toward the hospital room where Joel killed her father. Another version of Abby — a version she doesn’t recognize — tells her not to go in, and Abby does anyway. She says, “I don’t know you,” and then we have to watch as this other Abby, outside the hospital room, breaks down in tears. Is she crying because she’s remembering what happened to her father? Or is she crying because she knows what’s about to happen to her — how Abby is about to change, when she sees his body?
Ellie, too, has seen the body of her dead father. She even had to watch him die. “I’m going to kill you,” she says, pinned to the ground. “You’re all going to fucking die.” It’s impossible to blame her for threatening them in the moment — it’s easy to wish them all dead, right then and there — but it’s also hard not to see the cycle of self-destructive violence starting over. Joel killed Abby’s father. So Abby killed Ellie’s father. Now, if Ellie kills Abby, she’s all that’s left. And she’ll likely be left in the same state as Abby at the end of Episode 2, walking back to Seattle, her face splattered in blood, a look of hurt, not satisfaction, etched across her face.
“There are just some things, everyone agrees, that are just fucking wrong.”
What’s right and what’s wrong for Ellie will undoubtedly take up the rest of Season 2, even if losing Joel makes it difficult to look ahead. Before, back in Salt Lake City, Joel was the exception to the rule. “Everyone” could see that what he was doing was wrong. Killing 18 soldiers and one doctor while they try to save the human race is, generally, a choice most people would label as wrong. It’s one we hope Ellie isn’t destined to repeat.
But for Joel, it wasn’t wrong enough. Not then. In the moment, it was the only right thing he could do — for himself, mainly, but for Ellie, too. Sure, she said she wanted to go through with the life-threatening procedure, but she was just a kid. Joel could argue — and certainly did, in the years that followed — that she didn’t know the circumstances, and she didn’t know what she was giving up.
Life. A full life. A life filled with adventure and romance, awe and joy. He gave that to her. Could that be wrong? Could it be universally, unequivocally wrong?
In that hospital, Joel may have become a villain. But that’s not all he was. And he didn’t deserve to go out like this.
Grade: A
“The Last of Us” Season 2 releases new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.
Stray Tendrils
• OK, how smart are these clickers? They’re hiding underneath their own corpses. Their tendrils are hiding behind dead roots in the town’s pipes. Some of them, like the one that attacked Ellie in the premiere, are learning to lurk and wait instead of blindly rushing anything that moves. This fungus is evolving, and that’s fucking scary.
• The first shot of Joel in Episode 2 is when he stretches out his hand to help Abby. Damn, Craig. Way to twist the knife.
• That being said, the first time I watched Episode 2, it felt like Joel’s death lasted an eternity. But on a (reluctant) rewatch, his time in the ski lodge lasts less than 10 minutes. Adequately conveying Abby’s bloodlust without going beyond what viewers can tolerate had to be a tricky balance, and Mazin (who wrote the episode) and Mylod (the director) managed to find it. There’s ample time given to process a sudden, heartbreaking loss, but seeing it happen, alongside Ellie, never reaches an excessive level.
• I love the closing shot of Ellie, riding back to town, where Tommy and Maria are already starting to rebuild. But Ellie isn’t looking forward. She’s looking back at Joel’s body, like she’s already too focused on the past to see what the future might hold.
